About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

I watched episode 6 of ABC’s “Resurrection” (from April
13); right now, you don’t have to sign
on for any but the most recent episode. It was called “Home”.

I won’t get into the details as they’re widely
available. But some of the concepts
stand out.

There is a pastor who has fathered a child by one woman
returned. That leads to a confrontation
in a church service. Whoever wrote the
episode is probably familiar with conflicts within many mainstream church
congregations these days that lead to pastor firings or resignations – I’ve
seen a lot of that in my life.

There’s another issue with a prisoner who simply
dematerializes in his jail cell. The
sheriff lies down in his bed and takes a nap.

And there’s the engagement of researchers at NIH in Bethesda
(where I was a patient in 1962). Why not
the CDC in Atlanta? The suggestion is
made that the “returned” came from a parallel universe. Could they be holograms? An image could not
get pregnant.

In general, this series does not seem as appealing as “The
4400”, as the characters are not as compelling.

The ABC player did have an annoying glitch: one commercial's picture stayed on the screen while the audio from the show played. I had to take it off full screen with the escape key (Windows 8), close, and re-open, where the player resumed at the correct spot.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

The Huffington Post has a half hour video by a cable TV
episode, “Gay Asylum Seekers in America”, hosted by Ahmed Shibab Eldir in New
York City. The link (no embed available)
is here.

Eldir interviews two young men, from Guyana (South America,
the country where Jonestown was), and Nigeria, each in the country about a year
at the time of the broadcast (Oct. 2013).

A substantial number of gay men and women from “homophobic
countries” are in the United States legally on visas that could expire, and
some may seek asylum. A few have somehow
been able to flee here and arrive, with little means of support. Organizations to give them legal aid are
appearing in New York (the LGBT Asylum Project NYC), Chicago, San Francisco,
and Washington DC, Eldir also
interviewed two attorneys or activists, Ben Chapman and Kent Kindera.

Friday, April 25, 2014

ABC started a new series, “Black Box”, April 24, 2014, in
the place held by “Scandal”. The series
is created by Amy Holden Jones.

The Pilot episode Thursday night was called “Kiss the Sky”.

Kelly Reilly plays Dr. Catherine Black, a neuroscientist who
works at the Center for Neurological Research and Treatment in New York
City. Apparently she has to deal with
her own demons, her own middle illness, or at least bipolar disorder.

But in the Pilot she has an 18-year-old patient (Josh Green)
whose behavior has changed recently, leading to problems in college. It’s apparent that he is seeing things,
leading to the idea that he has schizophrenia.
He has developed a desire to become a writer and artist (and has the
talent to produce bizarre drawnings), which he is afraid will be flushed out of
him. But doctors find a tumor which must
be removed by difficult surgery, explaining the symptoms. If he has the surgery, will he lose his
creative edge? He gets desperate in a couple scenes, but when cleaned up he
looks good.

There were issues like this (not with organic brain tumors,
but with conflicts over my own goals) when I was “expelled” from William and
Mary in the fall of 1961 and wound up as an impatient at NIH for six months in
1962.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

“The Two Cubas”, directed by Carolina Valencia, in 2006, is
a significant 45-minute teledrama (from the Logo channel) about the lives of
two gay men, friends, in Cuba, and it seems more significant now because of
increasing concerns about recent anti-gay laws overseas. It could also be
called “The Two Joses”.

Jose Rodriquez is a dancer, 38 years old, and has his own
apartment in Havana. The film says that it is unusual for single men to be able
to live by themselves in Cuba without getting married. He has a successful career and has no desire
to emigrate.

Jose Luis is an English teacher from La Habana, and has been
invited to visit Germany by a friend there. Bu the has to get a visa to
go. At the end, he is denies the visa
because Germany fears he is too “young” and will become “dependent”.

The film shows gay bars and parties in Cuba, which seem to
always get the watchful eyes of the police, but don’t seem to attract the
harassment today that they did in the past.
Luis is stopped in one scene for not carrying his ID card.

The DVD can be rented from Netflix (“Red Envelope”).

In 1980, there was an influx of gay men who had fled Cuba by
boat, and there was social pressure in the gay community in Dallas (where I
lived at the time) to house them. I
wonder if the same situation could develop today if there are people seeking asylum
from Russia, Nigeria and Uganda. But in
1980, the people were already here.

In 2000, there was a film “Before Night Falls” by Julian
Schnabel about Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas (Javier Bardem) who would escape
Cuba’s communism die of AIDS in 1987.

It strikes me as odd that Michael Moore (in “Sicko”)
depicted Cuba as a model for health care!

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Morgan Spurlock told us “How to Live Forever” with his
episode of “Inside Man” Easter Sunday night (link here).

He started out by visiting the Grossman clinic (in Los
Angeles?) and getting a really complete physical. The stress tests cost him most of his chest
hair (the sticky pads), and the plethysmograph fit snuggly over his balding
leg. He said he was 43, and surprisingly
his biological age tested at 34. But he
had some dangerous spikes in blood pressure, and the doctor said he still had
ill effects from that month of junk food for “Super Size Me” (remember, he
actually threw up in that film). Sonny (on "Days of our Lives") gets prepped by Will but has a much better shot of living forever than Morgan does.

The whole idea is to stay healthy enough that stem cell
technologies and 3-D printing can give you new organs, and you can essentially
live forever (or at least to 150, as in an ABC special a few years ago). Venture capitalist Austin Hines in San
Francisco (who looked young and cute) provided more of the research in genomes
and fixing genetic mistakes, even in the unborn.

I wondered about the social, moral, political, and ethical
implications. If we can live forever, do
we remain employed forever? Do we stop
having children? Can we collect Social
Security forever? What about the people
who can’t afford this technology? Think
of the cultural rifts that would result. It seems that “death” and procreation
(with mixing of genes) are nature’s answer to entropy in physics. Can we overcome that? Should we? (Actually, another film shows
Spurlock giving intimate support to his wife’s giving birth.)

Toward the end, Spurlock demonstrated virtual reality, and
talked to himself (that is, a holographic replica of himself). He also got into discussing “Transcendence”
or the “singularity”, just as in the movie (April 19), complete with nanobots
or nanites. It seems that he really
believes we can reconstruct ourselves from digital copies of our consciousness
on super computers – that really might happen.
But talking to a copy of yourself isn’t quite the same as real human
interactions.

If you live forever, you might have to live through some
horrific catastrophes that people my age might miss. But that makes a case for sustainability.

Monday, April 21, 2014

On Easter Sunday, NBC Dateline aired “The Road Home”, hosted
by Lester Holt, and account of a 30-year-old Columbine survivor Sam Granillo
goes on a road trip to visit sites of other school shootings, in March and
April. He drives first to Jonesboro AR,
where there was an ambush by middle school students in 1998 – and they got out
at 21. Then he drives to Red Lake
Reservation in northern Minnesota, an area I drove through myself in July 2001.
He also visits Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” kicked off its Season 3
with a visit to Punjab, India. The basic
link ishere.

The most interesting part of the documentary was probably
the train ride into the mountains, through many tunnels, and an old railroad that
runs along steep embankments, looking pretty unstable.

A good part of the broadcast showed a bizarre confrontation
ceremony between military guards at the border of India and Pakistan.

Bourdain noted that farmers in the area lost land when the
British partitioned Pakistan from India, or that today farmers have to cross
the border and deal with the guards.

Bourdain also noted the heroin addiction in the area, part
of which he attributes to the political conflict. He points out that these are
two nuclear powers (although Pakistan has only the “suitcase nukes”).

As for the food, it was rather, well, lumpy. Yesterday, at a Bar Louie, the person next to
me ate raw oysters. It’s not polite to
photograph other people’s food, but it reminded me of Bourdain.

There was quite a bit of rural poverty, and I thought about
the film by Rocky Braat “Blood Brother” (Movies, Feb. 16), or even the video “Tomorrow”
by Timo Descamps (Drama and music blog, March 27).

Will Bourdain take on cultural hot spots, like Uganda and Nigeria (with the anti-gay laws), Ghana (with oil company controversy as well as Nigeria, again, with security problems for oil and privacy), Somalia (piracy), or the Central African Republic, which badly needs deep journalistic coverage in the midst of anarchy, or, for that matter, Syria.

Bourdain had kicked off Season 3 with a special hour
reviewing Season 2, with emphasis on a few episodes, especially Sicily (where
he was not pleased with the technical quality of the show) and Detroit.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Morgan Spurlock has started his new season (2) of Inside Man and
became a paparazzo this time (“Morgan Spurlock Joins the Paparazz”),
rebroadcast Friday night at midnight. The basic link is here.

Spurlock found that he had to get the lighting and focus
right, which is hard to do under conditions of this kind of “work”. He wound up making about $4 in his ten days.

Spurlock interviewed a security company president who argued
for the celebrities, protecting their kids from attention. One big concern is that a criminal could show
up pretending to be a photographer and have a weapon.

Another spokesperson for the celebrities said that we need a
constitutional amendment on the First Amendment reducing the right to
photograph people, especially minors, even in public places. He predicted
strong political activism to argue for such an amendment.

Non-celebrities have become more concerned about photographs of them showing up on other people's blogs and social media walls and getting tagged.

The economic incentive is, of course, the tabloids and
sometimes legitimate periodicals that pay big bucks for intimate photos that
the publishers believe supermarket customers will pay to buy.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The pilot episode, 97 minutes, in the FX series “Fargo”,
called “The Crocodile’s Dilemma” (directed by Adam Bernstein) did seem to
follow the 1996 Miramax film from the Coen Brothers, as I recall it. Critics say otherwise; it’s not a remake, and
not a sequel. But it seems similar.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Lorne Malvo, a drifter who seems to
have stolen a car and kidnapped a man in the trunk, who runs out into the
frozen wasteland when Malvo hits a deer.

Soon Malvo is in town (Bemidji) looking for weaklings to
recruit, and finds a henpecked 40-year old insurance salesman Lester Nygard
(Martin Freeman) to drag into his scams.
Toward the end of the episode the violence gets gratuitous, and seems
actually funny. Bob Odenkirk plays
Deputy Grimsley, who lets the drifter manipulate him. Molly (Allison Tolman) is
the bossy female cop.

I must say the early scenes with Nygard makes me glad I
turned down overtures a few years ago to train to become a life insurance
agent.

The opening says that this is a “true story”. I guess
so. I lived in Minneapolis from
1997-2003 and it wasn’t quite like this.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

“Ocean Adventure” (from Costeau, originally) showed dolphins and
sharks swimming and co-existing in a small area. The dolphis seem to know when they can
tolerate the presence of these large carnivores, who somehow know to leave them
alone. Cetaceans and cartilaginous fish
are quite far apart biologically – yet dolphins – mammals like us – started with
their inner fish (Thursday posting) and then went back to the ocean as mammals
for “free” food. Then the program showed
an endoscopic examination of the mouth and stomach of a zebra shark, which was
then set free. Free fish, anyone?

Richard Wiese’s “Weekend Adventure: Born to Explore” covered
the experience of “dance”, particularly in South Korea and China, and then
mentioned the origin of “break dancing” in New York City as an adjunct to
hip-hop and rap music, not to be confused with “dirty dancing” in today’s
discos.

Friday, April 11, 2014

NBC News and Dateline tonight aired “108 Hours: Inside the
Hunt for the Boston Marathon Bombers”, with Brian Williams. The major link is
here.

The documentary introduces double amputee Jeff Bauman, who
helped identify one of the suspects from a video while still in the
hospital. It then covers the day of the
incident by talking to several victims.

NBC has plenty of clips from a year ago on YouTube but does
not seem to have posted parts of the documentary yet.

Williams interviews police chiefs and articles, who admit
they had a real problem with respect civil liberties, in having to release
photos of possible suspects, the first of which was wrong.

The documentary moves on to the night of April 18, and the
shootout in Watertown. Police are not
trained for military style combat, and law enforcement feared they had
military-style guerilla terrorists as they shut down the entire city of Boston
as they looked for the last suspect, the younger of the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar.

Officials also admit that the misspelling of Tamerlan’s name
on a watch list may have impeded his having been stopped from re-entering the
country, as in this story in Boston,link

The attacks seem to be so especially brutal in the way they
were directed at individuals. Jeff says
he saw Dzhokhar on a cell phone in the crowd, unconcerned about the carnage
around him. It’s possible to imagine
incidents that could have been worse in other ways, with WMD’s, like with
radioactive devices or flux devices (for local EMP). Even so, the attacks seem to have been
brutally premeditated. “Jahar” had a twitter account (“J_tsar”) and a few posts
after the incident are rather chilling, link His icon is bisarre. Note particularly the comment the evening after about not finding "love" in the city.

The documentary did not cover the carjacking Thursday night, which was particularly disturbing because the car owner was kidnapped at the same time, although he escaped when the brothers stopped for gas. Most carjackings involve just taking the vehicle.

Wikipedia attribution link for map of incident. The article has many graphic pictures.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

PBS aired two important nature specials Wednesday April 9,
2014, at least on WETA in Washington.

One of these was a NOVA subseries, “Inside Animal Minds”
called “Bird Genius”. The documentary
showed corvids (crows and jays) learning to solve complex problems to get
food. One of these problems involved
using the Archimedes Principle (which I recall from a freshman physics
lab). Dogs were relatively unable to
solve the same problem. One of the
animals was the “new Caledonian crow” (from Scotland).

The film showed a chart correlating the ration of brain mass
to body mass, and crows and humans have a higher ratio than most other animals.

The film even showed the ability of bee colonies to use
geometry to keep track of nectar supplies, and communicate among the
workers.

Crows and ravens are thought to be the smartest of the
corvids, but the English equivalent of the blue jay also had similar
abilities. Corvids also make tools from
sticks and leaves to probe for food, and can teach the young to do this. Among mammals, chimpanzees and probably gorillas
and some other primates do this.

Corvids seem to be able to learn to recognize and bond to
individual people, even in the wild.

PBS NOVA has a link for the show, which requires the visitor to confirm her local station,here. (Sorry: ther embed for the entire show posted earlier appears to have been put up by an imposter of PBS; it had to be removed.)

There is a crow in the neighborhood that seems to recognize
me, even when I am at a shopping center a mile away. On the day in 2012 of Hurricane Sandy, the
crow would chase me back inside (twice) when I went outside from the garage. Did he sense the storm coming and was he
trying to protect me? Crows seem to communicate with us as if they were an alien intelligence, but equal to us.

Then Neil Shubin hosted “Your Inner Fish”, the beginning of
another science series, showing how human limb anatomy goes all the way back to
fish, because of a gene that allows the number of bones with each succeeding
segment of an appendage to increase while going farther from the center of the
body. The primary link is here.

I was somewhat reminded of Reid Ewing’s short film “Free
Fish” (2012), in which at one point Reid pets and plays with a sting ray (not
even a bony fish, more like a shark).
Why is this large primate messing with me? Then, “I’m done with you.” But, indeed “fish are like people; when one
of them dies, nobody notices.”

Wikipedia attributionlink for New York Aquarium, Coney Island (my last visit, 1990). Also, Wikipedia attributionlink for picture of crow.

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

As the anniversary of the Boston Marathon attack in 2015
approaches, CNN aired the first report of
“The Survivor Diaries”, about Adrianne Haslet-Davis, whose foot was
amputated after shrapnel tore through her ankle.

The report for the story is here. Anderson Cooper hosts. The Advocate has a report here of Cooper’s coverage (you have to watch a
Gilette ad of male chest shaving to get to the content).

The initial part of her account is quite chilling. She and her husband saw the first explosion
and feared the worst, which happened.
Her husband was also injured.

The last part of the episode did show her returning to
dancing with the prosthetic.

I won’t get into recounting the emotionality of the middle
of the episode. She was also honored at
a Boston Red Sox game.

I did not particularly relish this series, but saved it last
night as I was out. I get rather
uncomfortable contemplating intimate relationships after disfiguring
injuries. I do have an issue with the
idea of remaining sexually attracted to a partner after something happens,
particularly because of a crime resulting from someone else’s nihilistic
indignation. I have not actually
experienced this up close, although there was a sequence in the late 1970s when
this might have happened. Dealing with
HIV patients as a “buddy” in the 1980s did not present this problem precisely
because the patients would not live long, so emotionally that aspect made it
actually easier. Likewise, dealing with
end of life from ordinary aging does not present this problem and is not by
itself challenging or controversial. But
I’m not sure that I would could survive a deliberate maiming (conceivably
targeted) like this, or could support someone else in a relationship. This is not a particularly good place to be,
though, as it makes one (and others) even more vulnerable, especially to
misdirected anger or hostility of others. But, I am 70.

When I was substitute teaching a few years ago, a few times I was ambushed with an expectation of involvement for which I was not prepared by my own life or choices. I resisted making something or someone "all right".

Anderson dances with her and says he forgets which leg is
the prosthetic, as it is all covered with socks
Then Anderson says, “This is how my dates with girls always ended”.

Adrianne does say that the surviving brother Dzkohkar
Tsarnaev should get the death penalty. But
there needs to be a full trial to know what he was really thinking. But I sometimes wonder if lack of emotional
resilience (as I described in myself) can invite more problems from others who
somehow think they are victims themselves.

Update: April 10

NBC News reported on Jeff Bauman, also an amputee, who has written a book named "Stronger".

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

The Smithsonian Institution Channel has a series called “Mystery
Files”, and the “Mystery Files: Hitler” (23 minutes) gives an insight on to
what led Hitler down the path of being one of history’s most violent dictators,
after wandering through early adulthood as a homeless, failed art student in
Vienna just before World War I.

Hitler was not even “German”, being born in Austria, nor was
he “Aryan”. Perhaps there was a sense of
upward affiliation in his attitude. What
seems surprising is that, as a soldier, he adapted to military life in the
trenches during WWI relatively well despite his quirkiness and perhaps physical
backwardness, because of his absolute loyalty to something bigger than himself,
Germany. Most of the time, he worked as a runner, delivering messages between
the front lines and command.

Hitler was wounded twice.
The first time, he had a shrapnel wound in the thigh and was in the hospital
a few months, but returned to duty. The
second time, he became a casualty of poison gas, apparently phosgene, which
causes blistering of the skin, internal lung tissue, and blindness, usually
temporary but sometimes permanent.
Hitler dreaded blindness as a personal sacrifice, because for a time he
still imagined going back to his art.
Intelligence records show he may be been in a psychiatric hospital where
his blindness continued for a while because of supposedly hysterical or
psychosomatic factors. He was treated
roughly by a psychiatrist whom the Nazis later eliminated with a hit man. Gradually, his sight returned. It would be interesting to wonder if the skin
burns could have been permanently disfiguring.

Hitler decided to go into politics. What seems amazing, though, is that a man who
now was now over 30 and had never risen about private first class made his way
up party ranks so quickly.

This is one of a long series of biographical and historical
portraits of enigmas, available on Netflix Instant Play.

Monday, April 07, 2014

There’s a new series on HBO by Mike Judge, “Silicon Valley”,
a half-hour comedy series which premiered Sunday night, April 6.

The cast seems to include a lot of appealing young men, the
kind that would be viewed as attractive in a gay disco. They are surprisingly stereotyped.

The comedy is supposed to come from the idea that those who
succeed in Silicon Valley (not “Silicone Valley although that could make sense)
are the least prepared to maintain it, as a company tries to fight off
acquisition by Google.

The pilot includes a vomiting-wastebasket scene, and the
line “I have gay friends”, which is something gay teachers had to say back in
the 1980s.

The series is directed by a former systems engineer from the
very early days of the Internet.

Saturday, April 05, 2014

NBC Dateline “Saturday Mystery” was the re-airing of “The
Girl in the Blue Mustang” (from 2010), the story of the murder a college co-ed
freshman who starred in some rock videos (maybe reminiscent of the “kiss or
kill” scene, Movies blog, April 2), in a
parking lot near I-10 and north of LA on the edge of the Mojave Desert, on Feb. 22, 2000.

A security guard, Raymond Jennings was eventually
prosecuted, after returning home from serving a tour in Iraq in 2005. He stayed in jail until trial in 2008. He was a father of five kids.

It took three trials to convict him, of second degree murder. The juries hung on the first two trials. The physical and forensic evidence was seen
as weak. Jennings seemed to know a lot
more about the case than was reasonable.

The third trial was held in the Antelope Valley, the
original jurisdiction, rather than in LA. Was this a case where a witness "helped too much"? The jury deliberated for weeks.

At sentencing, Jennings maintained his innocence and said he held no remorse because he didn't do it. He claimed he was at peace with God and Christ.

There is a detailed analysis on a blog called “Requiem for
an Editor”, here.

Friday, April 04, 2014

ABC 20-20 had a three disturbing stories about teen behavior
tonight, in an episode titled "Teenage Decisions, Dire Consequences".

The last of the stories considered the “choking game” which
even “good kids” engage in. About the
only explanation was the immaturity of the “teen brain” which does not
recognize consequences of actions. Dr. Phil has often talked about this. In my own observation (having worked as a subsitute teacher), I simply see enormous variations in maturity. Participation in multiple "real world" activities requiring some social interaction seems to result in much more rapid social and cognitive maturity. But so do some solidarity activities. Chess, for example, by the nature of the game, teaches the idea of long-term consequences for early decisions.

The most disturbing story was the first episode where a
teen, Tyler Hadley, killed both parents and then held a “house party” that
evening, in Florida town of Port Saint-Lucie, FL. The parents’ room was filled with junk during
the party. He told his best friend, who
waited several hours in disbelief to leave and call police.

Nancy Grace, legal consultant to ABC, commented. The link is here. The teen took a "selfie" picture first.

The act seems incomprehensible. Tyler was sentenced to life without parole
recently.

Tyler had been angry at the house rules his parents were
applying, and apparently they were going to send him to a residential drug
rehab program.

This is a particularly disturbing case. Tyler had been given everything and came from
a “good” and stable home. But so had several other young men in the news in recent rampage cases.

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Will and Sonny officially got married at 1:26 PM EDT on NBC’s
“Days of our Lives”. NBC immediately put
on a commercial for its upcoming “Rosemary’s Baby”.

They were all dressed in formal wear – I’ve never worn a tux
in my life and would be up the creek if some dinner really required one.

One of the most interesting characters easier this week was
Tad, who was so repentant after being a jerk about Will two years ago.

I could say, all of this is so politically correct!

Note the music by Johann Pachabel.

Some episodes in the past have suggested that the soap takes place in Ohio, which has a constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions like Virginia's, but that ban is coming under repeated challenge now.

Could I spent the rest of my life with someone? I remember those days when I “dated” more,
wanting the relationship to mean something at all, to have some
continuity. But I had no thoughts like “spending
the rest of my life with someone”. To
maintain sexual interest if something bad happens (whether disease, war, or
crime) seemed alien to me, but at one time it became a big moral issue. That’s coming up soon on my new “Bill’s Media
Reviews” blog.

It seems that twice, at least, Sonny has let Will (behind
the scenes) shave his chest, before they’re in bed together. They have to look the same, you know.

Guy Wilson doesn’t seem to bring the dramatic intensity that
Chandler Massey did. (And the lighting on his face had a lot of glare in the
wedding scene today.) But Chandler was a
different kind of actor, very effective in scenes where “power” is needed, like
in dealing with Sami’s selfishness, or in manipulating EJ. Chandler is following the example of David
Gallagher (“Seventh Heaven”) and finishing his college degree. But did he not want to be around for the
actual wedding?

I can imagine another actor who could have been hired as
Will, Timo Descamps, 27, the Belgian-Dutch actor (also singer and producer,
said in Wikipedia to be openly gay) so effective as “Shane” in “Judas Kiss”. He can definitely act with a neutral US
accent.

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

PBS has aired a mini series “The Story of the Jews” by Simon
Schama. The last of these (“Return”)
gave the history of the establishment of the modern state of Israel and of the
security issues from the settlers’ point of view. The basic link from PBS is hereand another link from WETA is here.

In 1948, the British processed Jewish refugees from Eastern
Europe, where they still weren’t welcome even after the liberation from the
Nazis. Two-thirds had died in the
concentration camps.

The documentary interviewed a man with a family in a West
Bank settlement. He said that everyone
watched each other’s kids. Life was
somewhat communal. He said that his
people had a right to live there because they had in Biblical times. Much of the West Bank territory figures into
the detailed history of the kingdoms in the Old Testament.

When members of a group believe that their identity as a “people”
is of singular importance, their attitudes toward individual human rights does
change. Although Israel is OK with gay
rights, many other countries where there is a similar concern about collective
national identity (like Russia) are not, partly because procreation becomes
some important as a virtue.

All of this would contradict the work of George Meek (see
International blog, Dec 23, 2012 and May 20, 2013, picture above).

See also "The Case for Israel: Democracy's Outpost" on the Movies blog, Nov. 13, 2013, with Alan Dershowitz,

Smerconish started out by discussing political polarization,
and made the point that every single Republican member of the House was to the
right of every single Democrat. This is
the result of gerrymandering.

Later he moved to a discussion of the Malaysian lost plane,
and the contingent legal complications were presented. Boeing might be better off if the plane is
never found.

Media reports also indicate that he will take over a
Saturday program on CNN, link here. Apparently Smerconish first appeared on
the CNN Weekend on March 8, 2014.

Smerconish has a new novel on Amazon, called “Talk”, from
Cider Hill Press.

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At billstvreviews.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billstvreviews.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billstvreviews.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billstvreviews.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billstvreviews.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billstvreviews.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billstvreviews.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billstvreviews.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billstvrevuews.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.